"Interfacing the Digital" presents work
at the Walker Art Center focusing on new physical interfaces, particularly
for the presentation of digital art. Some examples include a freestanding
revolving door portal for the exhibition Art Entertainment Network;
a telematic table resulting from an international design competition;
and a "temporary autonomous sarai" developed collaboratively
by the new media artists Raqs Media Collective (New Delhi) and the architectural
practice Atelier Bow-Wow (Tokyo). These and other projects are prototypes
for new, interactive social spaces and functions being developed for the
Walker's new building expansion, designed by the architects Herzog &
de Meuron.

Background

In the last 5 years, especially following Documenta X
(1997), the Whitney Biennial of 2000, and Net_Condition at ZKM
(2000), there has been at times heated debate not only about how best
to present digital and specifically networked art in an institutional
context but also whether to do so at all.
[i] Not all of the discussion revolves around issues of physical
interfaces to such works, but their onsite presentation is a critical
concern for both museums and artistsand their audiences

This paper is informed by these discussions, mostly online
in the archives of nettime, rhizome, thingist, and CRUMB, but focuses
on personal experiences in curating 10 exhibitions over the past 5 years
that have included network-based art, including Beyond Interface: net
art and Art on the Net at Museums and the Web in 1998. [ii]

Finally, while working with art that is "born digital"
is a special case for most museums, I would argue that the many of the
issues and lessons are transferable to the digital contextualization of
any work in a museum's collection.

The Challenge of Context

One of the challenges of presenting digital art, is that
the context and the work are generally displayed via the same means: the
screen. How to differentiate between the metadata and the experience?
One strategy is simply to open the project in a new window. This was the
strategy of Beyond Interface.

The complaint from artists about such a strategy is that
it creates a curatorial gateway that viewers must pass through before
getting to the heart of the matter, the actual experience. If you think
of the example of video games, for instance, there may be a narrative
introduction to the game  but often there isn't and generally you
can skip through it  and then you're in game play mode. If you need/want
help you specifically open the FAQ or Help screens, but they are not the
main way of starting the game. Even with a painting exhibition, while
there is reams of research about the best length, tone, style, etc. for
didactics, the working assumption is that most people look at a painting
first and then read the label  the help file, so to speak 
if they want more information.

Even when net art exhibitions present the artwork first,
it is often because the only curatorial context is a list of links, which
is an equally unbalanced approach.

With Art Entertainment Network, I tried to finesse
this issue by making the interface part of the experience itself 
it is a portal to art projects but to find out more information, you must
go to the context (http://aen.walkerart.org
).

Figure 1 : Screenshot Art Entertainment Network

And more recently, with Translocations, I integrated
functions of various projects into the interface, so that from the contextual
pages, you could directly "modify" the text (via an artist project
called OPUS), send an email about it in any language anywhere (via
an artist project called Translation Map), create your own soundtrack
to browse to (via an artist project called Translocal Mixer) or
pop up the video window of the Translocal Channel. [iii]

The Challenge of Ghettoization

Related to the issue of context is ghettoization. There
is a conundrum. On the one hand, it can be valuable to provide a focus
on a particular set of practices, whether they are photography or performance
or digital art. It is easier in such focused contexts to meaningfully
differentiate between, say, documentary, fashion, abstract, and conceptual
photography, each of which has its own distinct  but intermingled
 histories, methods, presentational contexts, etc. At the same time
it doesn't make sense to completely divorce photography from the visual
arts; to not include it in a thematic show, whether about modernist art
in America or America in the modern age.

At the Walker, my answer, as is my wont, is both/and,
not either/or. Gallery 9 is a virtual gallery for network-based art. At
the same time, with a project like Shock of the View, we specifically
chose to compare a physical artwork with a digital artwork. In the example
below, for instance, the guest curator chose to compare a John Frederick
Kensett painting of Mount Washington with a ski resort webcam of the same
view, arguing that Kensett was the board-of-tourism-promotional-guy of
his day. In another case, I compared Ken Goldberg's Memento Mori,
with the ephemeral Sisyphus of Luciano Fabro.(http://www.walkerart.org/
salons/shockoftheview/.)

Figure 2 : Screenshot Shock of the View

Comparisons are odious, and in the end, the interesting
point is not that digital artist x is as good as artist y, but to bring
their contexts into collision and see what happens. Sometimes this is
best done in a digital only show. In the same way that Douglas Fogle at
the Walker might do a painting only show, such as Painting at the Edge
of the World, which explores diverse ideas about painting at the moment,
in the Walker's expansion there will be a "mediatheque" devoted
to the presentation of new media art (http://www.walkerart.org/programs/vaexhibpainting.html).
We will continue, however, to do crossover shows, such as How Latitudes
Become Forms, the current Walker exhibition curated by Philippe Vergne,
which incorporates performance, new media, and film directly into the
gallery exhibition (http://latitudes.walkerart.org).

The Challenge of Medium

In this post-medium, post-studio world, the idea of a
medium may seem slightly antiquated and naïve. It's all just art,
right?

Personally, I believe there is a cinema and video practice
tradition that cannot be fully subsumed in installation art. The same
with photography. And, I would argue, digital art.

Perhaps more to the point, however, is that we tend to
talk about most digital art through the prism of visual arts, perhaps
with a nod to video art, but in many ways the more fruitful comparisons
are with the performing arts. Digital art is time-based, often performative,
often ephemeral, often done in/by groups, process-oriented, and so on.
The burning issues of collectability and ownership and authenticity take
on a whole different tone when viewed against the history of music, its
notation system for replaying a core experience that is nevertheless different
every time; and the by-now acceptance of live and recorded performances
as different but not merely derivative.

Figure 3 : Alexei Shulgin performing as part of the
Open Source Lounge at Medi@terra 2000, Athens

The point in terms of interfacing the digital is to pick
our models appropriately. Many of the issues of displaying digital work
may be better solved working from a tradition of theater (think of object
theater in history museums, for instance) and performance than rigid adherence
to the traditional gallery experience.

In the Walker's new expansion, we have built in this idea
by putting the mediatheque galleries literally in the balcony level of
the new performing arts studio. While there is no specific plan to always
integrate the spaces, the assumption is that at some point artists will
insist on their integration, building out the potential of the conjunction
experimentally.

Figure 4 : Computer model of the new performing arts
studio as part of the Walker Art Center expansion. At the back of the
2nd level balconies will be a series of mediatheque spaces.

The Challenge of Expectations

One of the reasons why the computer and the network have
become not only subjects but also means of making artwork is that they
are so ubiquitous in our daily lives. That very ubiquity, while it may
provide a certain familiarity, also creates a whole set of expectations,
starting with "user friendliness."

Try telling Matthew Barney, he should be more user friendly.
Or Jasper Johns that his references are too obscure.

In this picture of BangBang, a work by the Bureau
of Inverse Technology, which was presented in a traveling show I curated
Telematic Connections, the Bureau disturbs our expectations of
interactivity. The viewer can do nothing to make the work "happen;"
it is dependent on environmental triggers outside of the gallery space
(http://telematic.walkerart.org/ and http://telematic.walkerart.org/telereal/bit_index.html).
This was extremely frustrating for many visitors but too often the response
was based on a false notion of "good interactivity," not, really,
whether they liked or understood the work on its own terms.

Interactivity and user-friendliness are just a couple
of the expectations with which we view digital art. On the museum side
of the equation, there are a whole set of parallel issues to do with touch/don't
touch, how much time you spend with a time-based work, and other learned
gallery behaviors. All of these are concerns that both the artist and
the presenter must take into consideration when interfacing the digital,
but the answer is not always obvious  to make things "easier"
to do, for instance.

The Challenge of Infrastructure

Figure 6 : David Henshaw, a friend of the author who
just "dropped by" to see the installation of Telematic Connections
at the San Francisco Art Institute, who was drafted to splice cables.

There is not really too much to say about infrastructure
except that it is absolutely necessary, vital, critical. Yet, in every
single installation I have done over the past 5 years, no matter where,
the level of support has been less than for a comparable contemporary
art exhibition at that institution. Not out of malice or design but largely
because of the history of the space and the personnel. Nevertheless, it
should be just as easy to plug-in a network connection as it is electricity,
as just one small example. But it's not, and until it is, institutions
will only be compounding their problems  and their audiences 
when interfacing the digital.

The problem is totally solvable, but perhaps primarily
in the design of new facilities. No facility should be built today that
does not assume that significant network and computing resources will
be required in potentially any area of the institution at one time or
another.

The Challenge of Legal Bug

A "legal bug" is a concept that the artist group
Knowbotic Research coined when their installation for Open Source Art
Hack. Minds of Concern was shut down not because of infrastructure
issues, exactly, but because of a contractual obligation  supposedly
 on the part of the institution hosting the show. [iv]

Minds of Concern uses port scanning, a technique
that is sometimes used by hackers to determine whether there are any weaknesses
in a server. Knowbotic's use was simply the scanning, no hacking. After
extensive consultation with legal experts around the United States, it
was determined that this is essentially like looking in a window or open
door from across the street. As long as you don't enter, there is no crime.
For Knowbotic's use, they were alerting various non-profits when there
was an insecurity in their system. It did not matter that this was a legally
protected activity  or at least not illegal activity  the
museum's "shrinkwrap" contract with its upstream Internet Service
Provider included a blanket clause  apparently standard - that no
port scanning was allowed, regardless of intent.

Knowbotic's point was that there is the possibility 
and necessity  of a public domain in the digital realm, but that
regardless of the public law around the issues, which in itself is problematic,
the standard operating practice of shrinkwrap licenses and their equivalents
was severely restricting the actual scope of the public domain. Legal
bugs, so to speak, are undermining public space in the digital realm.

My point is that institutions, while often overwhelmed
by the financial burden of litigation, understand and can protest cogently
and strongly an artist's right to fair use, to parody, etc. But in the
digital domain, it is often terra incognita, and so much easier to simply
say "it's in the contract," and let the lights go dim. As the
digital sphere becomes increasingly privatized, interfacing it becomes
increasingly compromised.

The Challenge of Presentation

One can list dozens of other challenges to interfacing
the digital, but I would like to end with three examples of the presentation
of work in physical space. These are not intended, naturally, as universal
solutions, but as case studies of attempts to solve particular issues
in specific situations.

Let's Entertain and Art Entertainment Network

As I said earlier, the interface that we created for the
online exhibition Art Entertainment Network, was designed as a
portal; a format "native" to the network. Once we had decided
on this exhibition design, we commissioned Antenna Design in New York
to create a physical interface, which could be used in the galleries as
part of the parallel exhibition of visual arts, Let's Entertain (http://www.walkerart.org/va/letsentertain/le_content.html).

Antenna designed a freestanding, revolving door, which
acted as a kind of portal between the physical space of the exhibition
and the virtual space of the online artworks. As you push the door around,
it automatically calls up the home page of each project. A touchpad allows
you to interact with the work.

This door could hold its own, so to speak, with the other
installations in the exhibition. At the same time, it was appropriate
to the concept of the online interface  as a portal. It also didn't
assume that the goal of the interface was to create a comfortable browsing
situation for hours of enjoyment. Like much gallery behavior it was designed
for more casual browsing. A holder next to the didactic label contained
printed bookmarks, which visitors could take and use to later log on to
the site at their convenience and in their favorite viewing position.

Architecture for Temporary Autonomous Sarai

The Walker's most recent commission is a collaboration
between Raqs Media Collective from Delhi and Atelier Bow-Wow, an architectural
practice in Tokyo, Architecture for Temporary Autonomous Sarai,
which is part of the How Latitudes Become Forms exhibition, currently
on view.

From a visit to Raqs Media Collective's Sarai project
 first online and then in Delhi  I was very impressed with
their genealogy of the idea of the sarai as well as with the energy, levels
of interaction, and quality of output. This is how Raqs described Sarai
in a conversation with myself, Yukiko Shikata, and Gunalan Nadarajan that
undergirded the parallel online exhibition, Translocations.

". . . for us, the creation of a sarai was
to create a åhome for nomads' and a resting place for practices of new
media nomadism. Traditionally, sarais were also nodes in the communications
system (horse-mail!) and spaces where theatrical entertainments, music,
dervish dancing, and philosophical disputes could all be staged. They
were hospitable to a wide variety of journeysphysical, cultural,
and intellectual. In medieval Central and South Asia, sarais were
the typical spaces for a concrete translocality, with their own culture
of custodial care, conviviality, and refuge. They also contributed to
syncretic languages and ways of being. We would do well to emulate even
in part aspects of this tradition in the new media culture of today. .
. . This might create oases of locatedness along the global trade routes
of new media culture.(Transcript, Translocations, full transcripts at:
http://latitudes.walkerart.org/translocations/)

A sarai was exactly what was needed for the How Latitudes
Become Forms exhibition  a place for social intercourse, both
onsite and translocally; a place for the investigation of both artists'
work and the exhibition context.

Another artist group in the exhibition was the Tokyo-based
architectural practice Atelier Bow-Wow, Yoshiharu Tsukamoto and Momoyo
Kaijima, who are proponents of what they have named da-me or no-good
architecture. Multilayered structures with varied uses (underpass + cinema
+ bar + barbershop + store, for example), these buildings epitomize, for
them, a new creative, adaptive aesthetic.

We decided to ask Raqs and Bow-Wow to collaborate on a
"Temporary Autonomous Sarai"  something that was physically
modest, intended to be temporary, and programmatically could function
as a sarai for the exhibition.

In 2001, after receiving a grant from the NEA, we held
an international design competition, inviting over 30 artists, designers,
and architects to submit designs for a telematic table with only this
for criteria:

"We are envisioning a human-scaled interface that
is neither a standard desktop computer nor a public kiosk, but which viscerally
engages the user; encourages social interaction among groups of people,
can be networked and adapt to a variety of situations and museum spaces.
Like an ordinary table, the telematic table is a space of gathering and
exchange. It will give its users access to the Walker's multidisciplinary
collections and resources, foster curiosity and inquiry into the museum's
information assets, and create a setting for social interaction and dialogue
among groups of visitors." (Walker Art Center, 2001)

Of the responses, we selected 5 for further paper prototyping
and from those selected a proposal by a virtual group composed of Marek
Walczak, artist/architect; Michael McAllister, furniture designer; Jakub
Segen, Bell Labs researcher; Peter Kennard, programmer.

The core idea of the table is very simple. Using gesture
recognition software developed by Segen, which allows for a multiple-touch
interface, users drag digital assets from a "pond" to personal
"puddles." Relationships with related works in other puddles
are automatically highlighted, encouraging, hopefully, cross-tabletalk
and interaction. In any case, just the shoulder-to-shoulder layout of
the table, we expect to lead to at least social situations, if not direct
conversations. Naturally, more information is available about each selected
object; objects can be "collected" on a postcard printout; and
URLs for even deeper investigation from home will be provided.

Conclusion

Even though the Turing Machine  the computer 
is defined as a universal black box that can do anything  follow
any instruction set  it is important not to confuse and conflate
the flexibility of computation with the physical interface of computers
as they are currently sold by most corporations. Interfacing the digital
can and should be as varied as the situations in which it is called for;
the audiences being sought; and the artwork being presented. This will
take imagination and ingenuity, but it is time for museums to stage their
own version of the infamous Apple ad that threw a "monkey wrench"
into the Orwellian screen of IBM computing and be as creative interfacing
the digital as they are with every other exhibition installation they
present.